SUCCESS STORIES
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Palm Aire saves Thousands of Dollars in Transcription and Paper Costs With RAPID Chiropractic Practice Management Software
THE CUSTOMER
Dr. Thomas More Manidis, D.C. founded Palm Aire Medical and Rehab Center in 2005 as a multi-discipline, multi-location healthcare resource in the Fort Lauderdale area.
THE PROBLEM
As the practice grew in complexity and patient volume, expenditures for transcription services reached thousands of dollars per month, impacting both profitability and growth potential.
THE SOLUTION
Dr. Manidis explored RAPID Complete chiropractic software with an advanced network capability supporting all of his locations.
THE RESULTS
The system paid for itself in weeks through establishing a virtually paper-free operating environment and the elimination of transcription costs.
Dr. Thomas More Manidis, D.C. completed his chiropractic studies at Atlanta’s Life University of Chiropractic, then gained experience working in a couple of established practices before ultimately striking out on his own.
Multiple Locations, Multiple Disciplines
Dr. Manidis’ experience included providing care at a clinic that, besides chiropractic care, provided medical and orthopedic services as well. This, Dr. Manidis quickly found, was what he was looking for. He opened his own multi-discipline clinic in Pompano Beach and within a few months had also established like practices in nearby communities. The healthcare enterprise – Palm Aire Medical and Rehab Center – now is comprised of clinics in Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Tamarac and Lake Worth.
Palm Aire’s combined staff of 28 people includes chiropractors, medical doctors and massage therapists at each location, as well as physician assistants and clerical personnel. The combination of specialties and skills enables Palm Aire to deliver an extensive range of healthcare and pain management services, including general and specialized chiropractic offerings, family practice medicine and several specialties and an extensive range of treatments. Among the specialized services available at the clinics are nerve conduction velocity testing, computerized range-of-motion and muscle testing, digital ultrasound testing, and trigger point injection which are often under referrals from other healthcare professionals.
Because the practice network is so comprehensive, it receives numerous referrals from orthopedic surgeons, neurologists and internists who take advantage of its pain management resources, Dr. Manidis says. Having M.D.s on the staff broadens Palm Aire’s capabilities and extends the clinics’ value as community health resources.
Technology
“We started out with hand-written notes placed in file folders, and progressed to dictation,” the doctor says. “But as the practice expanded we found ourselves spending literally thousands of dollars on transcriptions.”
After one and one-half years of this, he began exploring opportunities to move away from conventional documentation and office management in favor of automated electronic processes.
Dr. Manidis encountered RAPID at a chiropractic convention and witnessed a demonstration of the RAPID end-to-end chiropractic software solution for clinical notes and documentation and business office management that is optimized for multiple office configurations.
The ACOM Health RAPID Solution
The key components are the documentation software and the practice management software.
The RAPID Documentation Software - allows doctors to automate SOAP notes recording by tapping checklists, images and diagrams displayed on the interactive screen, each of which has standardized or doctor-customized paragraphs of associated text that build the patient file. Handwritten input can be scribed directly on the screen for automatic inclusion in the file. External materials such as x-rays, photos, accident reports can be scanned in and automatically assigned to the correct place in the correct field. For interim, outcomes assessment, final, and other reports, the doctor simply selects the desired report and it is generated automatically from the stored information.
The RAPID Practice Management Software - features customizable encounter-driven scheduling and billing processes that enable doctors and allied specialties to improve efficiency, reduce accounts receivable days outstanding and manage contracts. It is comprised of four core components: Scheduling Management; Patient Account Management; Billing and Collections Management and Enhanced Practice Management.
More than 80 operational and management reports are available, providing an overview of practice progress and also snapshots as required.
RAPID software enables Palm Aire and its doctors to operate in a paper-free environment. “An exception exists in the case of documents that must be notarized,” Dr. Manidis says. “For these, we print the document, notarize it, provide it to the parties who need it and preserve it electronically in our own databases. No paper copy is needed.”
“Although insurers are notorious for not paying, we almost always get paid because we provide so much supporting detail and customize each report to the individual patient. ”
Palm Aire’s Configuration
To get started, ACOM Health helped Dr. Manidis set up a single clinic first to prove expectations, then rolled out the practice-wide solution over a three-month period. RAPID also supported modification of stored text paragraphs to doctors’ preferences, incorporating alternative phrasings to preclude the “canned” look often associated with automated notes and reporting. Dr. Manidis further expanded much of the text to provide detailed descriptions of the various modalities applied along with their purposes and expectations.
Patient records are initiated though a patient self-registration kiosk, a touch-screen computer with resident interactive RAPID chiropractic software. When patients arrive for their appointments, they are handed a tablet computer displaying an electronic form template. Patients fill in their personal information, complaint, etc., and hand it to the receptionist. The form is automatically saved as the patient file, forming the basis for all of the information developed in the diagnosis and the course of treatment. In electronic form, the file is available under authorization from any of the clinic locations.
The Bottom Line
When the bills are submitted, they carry a level of detail that third party payers appreciate, Dr. Manidis says. “Although insurers are notorious for not paying, we almost always get paid because we provide so much supporting detail and customize each report to the individual patient. If we encounter resistance, we have all of the evidence we need to support our case.”
“We conform to Federal mandates for electronic medical records and with minor exceptions, we operate in an efficient, economical paper-free environment. We get perfect scores on state inspections by the Florida Department of Health in our dispensaries. RAPID brought our practice into the 21st Century and enables us to operate at a very favorable level of profitability.”
Next Steps
